A decision by the state Council on Affordable Housing has essentially ended the objection process for a group of Walden Woods residents fighting to have affordable housing restrictions removed from their properties.
On December 9, COAH denied the residents’ motion seeking the chance to resubmit their objection to the township’s element and fair share plan, submitted last year.
Caryn and Voytek Trela, who have been representing the 16 homeowners in the development, filed the motion in August seeking the opportunity to re-file their objection. The residents say they filed a timely objection to the township’s plan, but COAH deemed it invalid. The residents argued in the motion, however, that their original objection was improperly handled by the executive director of COAH.
The residents had argued that according to COAH’s procedural rules, COAH should have given the Walden Woods residents a chance to correct the deficiencies COAH found with their complaint, which they say they never received.
Walden Woods, on Bear Brook Road, was created in the 1990s by a non-profit organized called Bootstraps. The program accepted “sweat equity” in lieu of a down payment, eliminating the primary impediment to home ownership for low-income families, up-front cash. Once the homes were built and occupied, they would fall subject to a 10-year affordable housing restriction.
Now, 10 years later, according to homeowners’ deeds, the affordable housing restrictions should be lifted, along with all of the other restrictions that came with the program. The township and the state Council on Affordable Housing, however, found that the properties are subject to the 30-year affordable restrictions until 2028.
In October, the township announced that representatives from COAH had agreed to go back through their records in hopes of working out a solution that would satisfy both the Walden Wood residents and township with regard to affordable housing restrictions on their homes.
Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh said that “from the township perspective, we will continue to work with them to see if there is any compromise we can all reach.”
Caryn Trela maintained that the residents’ objection was not untimely. Upon research, she said she found that “the custom for filing legal papers is that the postmark date is the one that counts. If an agency wants to receive papers by a certain date, its rules must explicitly state so, or else custom governs. Our objection was postmarked three days before the filing deadline.”
However, Trela said residents were expecting COAH to deny their motion. She said COAH has been consistent in that it continues to refuse to deal with residents through official legal channels. “Instead, COAH and the township will only meet with us unofficially, off the record, and behind closed doors. So far these meetings have gotten us nowhere. At the last one the township maintained, as usual, that our restrictions are for 30 years while simultaneously and incongruously threatening to extend our restrictions to 30 years.”
Trela said it would not make sense for the residents to appeal COAH’s decision in the Appellate Division because the motion was only asking that we be allowed to rewrite our objection. “Even if the Appellate Division found in our favor, and we rewrote our objection, it would fall to COAH to recognize it or dismiss it. The good news it that, even if we do not appeal this decision, we still have the right to appeal the final approval of West Windsor’s plan if the plan includes our homes as though they have 30 year restrictions.”
